Friday, September 3, 2010

Candy Spelling's Candyland Hits the Open Market

All the real estate gossips and others who care about such silly things already know that Tinseltown's most famous widow Candy Spelling is fixin' to move to a 16,500 square foot (give or take) dee-luxedoo-plex penthouse at the newly built Robert A.M. Stern designed tower in the Century City area of Los Angeles. It's widely whispered and reported she paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $47,000,000 for her new crib in the sky.

As the custom build-out of her still gigantic but comparatively downsized digs nears completion, Miz Spelling must be getting eager and antsy to unload her famous (and infamous) mega-mansion in the hoity-toityHolmby Hills neighborhood. Miz Spelling has long had her house, which she rather haughtily calls The Manor, quietly and not so quietly on and off the market for a number of years. There have long been pared down listings on the websites of the real estates handling the property but it's never been, as far as we can remember, on the wide open market. However, thanks to Wendell Whistleblower, we've learned that Miz Spelling has finally, at long last, and just yesterday put the listing for her titanic 56,500 square foot, 123 room faux-French chateau on the MLS.

Interestingly–and somewhat surprisingly to Your Mama–Miz Spelling has opted to stick with the same blood curdling $150,000,000 asking price she's been unsuccessfully shopping the property around at for years.

Back when The Widda Spelling first put her humongous house on the market and allowed some news cameras into The Manor, she giggled about how she really didn't know how manypoopers there are in her convention hall sized house. Presumably the real estates of record–or more likely their assistants–spent an entire weekend schlepping through all 4 floors of the mansion counting bedrooms and terlits because listing information now shows there are 14 bedrooms and an astonishing 27 poopers. Have mercy! Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's tyrannical and theatrical house gurlSvetlana would fall over in hysterics and convulsions iffin we told her that she was going to be responsible for keeping 27 damn terlits polished.

Other interior comforts and frivolities include a billiard room, arcade room, doll museum, 2-lane bowling alley, a flower cutting hall with professional florist refrigerator, a gift wrapping room or two, silver and china storage rooms, an art studio, exercise room, music room, barber and beautician facilities, a service wing with staff quarters, at least 5 fireplaces, and garaging for 16 automobiles.

The grounds, which span 4.69 flat acres according to listing information and must require a full-time groundskeeping crew to maintain, include a circular football field sized motor court with a fountain in the center, formal gardens, expansive lawns, vast terraces, a koi pond, a l'orangerie, antique rose bushes, tennis court, and a swimming pool with adjacent pool house complete with full kitchen and bar.

It makes Your Mama's heart squeal with agony to think of Miz Spelling–who, as far as we know, lives alone but for her staff–coming home on a Friday night after a casual dinner with Tori at Koo Koo Roo and rambling around that big ol' hotel sized house all by her lonesome.

Making matters worse and driving Your Mama to the drink at nine in the damn morning is that we can't realistically conceive of just who might want to buy a house like this at a price like that in the shabby economy with which we're currently saddled. None the less, has anyone called real estate size queen Tyler Perry or Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko whose been bobbing around on his big boat off the coast of Venice, CA the last couple of days?

Of course, we don't know a book end from a tight end but since Miz Spelling seems reluctant to slash the asking price she just might have better luck getting the property re-zoned and selling her steroidal mansion as some sort of corporate retreat or maybe as a half-way house for Hollywood wives who get unceremoniously traded in for a younger and firmer version of themselves by their middle-aged and out of shape entertainment executive huzbands.

It's our understanding that Miz Spelling still owns and maintains an ocean front spread on Malee-boo's super swank Carbon Beach that's just a few doors down from David Spade. Now can y'all imagine those two having coffee and do-nuts on the deck on a summer morning?

God I hate this house, but will refrain from additional comment on its "architecture", since it's all been said & done before. Even beating the dead horse endlessly will only produce Alpo.

It seems to me that the multi-challenged (taste, motherhood, real estate, etc.) Widda Spelling is going to continue to enjoy a virtually perpetual incoming tide of residuals, especially considering the number of repeats one can be bombarded with on the "flyover" channels of most cable & satellite systems.

At that rate, she could dig her heels in, maintain the property, and watch the market come & go as many times as plastic surgery & medical science will allow until someone, anyone, meets her arbitrary asking price. She seems to be stubborn enough...

This house is cheap, in the sense that it is all doubled up, so to speak, so that it can fit on a too small lot in LA. The wings should extend perpendicularly to the main torso as would be case in an English country estate. Why was her husband such a cheapskate that he didn't buy a lot big enough to let the house stretch out and relax?

Thanks for the shout-out Mama. Celebrating Black Gay Pride in ATL with some of my closest friends. Did I mention that ATL is hosting DragonCon attendees, Georgia Dome ChickFilA game attendees, Atlanta Team Tennis attendees, Georgia Tech's home game football attendees, Atlanta Motor Speedway attendees, and Hotlanta AA Roundup attendees? Gurl it's gonna be a hot time in the old town this weekend! Now you know why they call it HOTLANTA! Hoping with all these attendees I can find some trouble! Also hoping you and the Dr. Cooter have a fabulous holiday weekend. TTFN, Candi with an "i"

I can't imagine what she's thinking regarding the price she's listed it at, but clearly L.A. dosen't have a single real estate agent with the courage to speak realistically to her. It's never going to sell at that price, and may not sell at all when you stop to consider what an amazing architectural (and I don't mean faux) a potential buyer could build for themselves with that kind of money or a lot less, and with an incomparably better view too than the back side of those privacy hedges she's got surrounding her home.

This house may go the way of Leona Helmsley's Greenwich estate. Helmsley's place started out with a $125 million asking price and eventually dropped to $55 million. The property is now in contract for a rumored amount around $30 million. It is assumed the builder buyer plans to tear the house down and build several new houses on the property.Good luck with that price, Candy!